A file photo of a foreclosed home in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, file)

(Newser)
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As the foreclosure mess gets worse almost literally by the day, Brett Arends poses a question to all those underwater homeowners still making mortgage payments: Are you nuts? He's actually far more diplomatic than that, but to him "the big question" in all this isn't why so many "distressed homeowners" are defaulting. "It's why any of them are still making payments," he writes in the Wall Street Journal.

"If they just stop paying, what is going to happen to them? In many cases they may get to live in the home rent-free for months, even years, until the bank gets around to seizing it," writes Arends. The morality of this makes him "uneasy," but then again, a mortgage "isn't simply a promise to repay the lender. It's a promise to repay the lender or to forfeit the home. Isn't someone simply fulfilling their contract by handing over the keys when asked?" Besides, homeowners may have taken on reckless loans, but lenders were just as reckless signing off on them.

The Banks caused property value to plunge - not average run of the mill home owners. These banks need to take responsibility for their actions and take their overpriced properties back which are attached to those overpriced mortgages.

elgaguito

Oct 13, 2010 12:56 PM CDT

Our house went from $300,000 to less than $100,000...we asked for a modification and were told that it was not the mortgage's company fault that the values had nose dived...that it was my fault for overpaying..I told them that they were right, I did overpay, but, I had used THEIR money...I don't think they care.. we care less.. come and get it !!!

voca52

Oct 13, 2010 11:41 AM CDT

Always a pleasure to listen to the two people who probably created the "interest only" mortgage concept. Bravi guys. Guess you both through your hats in the air when the gov permitted the Credit Card Companies to charge whatever "interest" the wanted. Oh?...Was Obama President back then, in the '70's? This Crap...has been going on forever and will continue to go on because the people who HAVE wealth...don't want too much to change and the people who don't, are so stressed over trying to put gas in their tanks, they can't be empowered!!! Hey, Rock on guys...protect yourselves!!!!